I know Kirby thinks it’s a big deal, but when I see the occasional poll of recruits about what factors are important in choosing a football program, there are all kinds of things cited, like education, proximity to home, bonding with staff, opportunity to win championships, preparation for a pro career, etc. But one thing I’ve never seen on a list is fan turnout at a spring game.

So, just wondering… how much do you think it matters? Is it something that a recruit makes a priority, something that maybe is a tiebreaker in a close call, or simply something nice to note?

But he added that athletes ability to control use of their name image and likeness is not “the heart of the matter.”

“The heart of the matter is that Alabama can pay its (strength) coach $500,000 a year and it’s prohibited from taking care of its athletes if it wants to — and many of these athletes will never spend one day in the NFL or NBA and many are from impoverished backgrounds.”

Note the “if it wants to” there. Isn’t it likely that there are programs out there that would like to do just that?

By the way, speaking of court rulings, it looks like Kessler’s suit is going as well for the NCAA as O’Bannon did.

With every passing day, it grows on me that Tennessee football is in a new phase of blogging manna from heaven. Between Junior and Booch, it’s been a rich source, and it appears that the Fulmer and Pruitt Show is prepared to carry on that entertaining tradition. I am grateful.

“To me, it’s kind of like our football team for the fans,” Pruitt said after the spring game. “The ones that were here, I’m proud they’re here. They’re fired up, ready to get going. And then there were some people that weren’t here, they had legitimate reasons they couldn’t be here. Then there were some people that weren’t here, why weren’t they here?

“It’s kind of like our football team. I think we all need to look in the mirror and see who we want to be.”

Fulmer’s totally cool with that, man.

“I certainly feel his passion,” Fulmer said. “That’s what we hired. I think he understands, and everybody should understand, that to get this turned back where we need it to be turned to, we need everybody.

“He knows that. He can’t do this by himself. It’s going to take us all to get back to where we want to be. I just know how passionate he is about doing it. I appreciate that part of it.”

Of course he does. He just hired the guy and is invested in the decision, at least until the results on the field don’t match the upfront attitude. But about that whole getting the fans fired up thing? Maybe Pruitt needs to look in the mirror himself and ponder meeting them half way.

New Tennessee football coach Jeremy Pruitt raised some eyebrows when he decided to postpone the Vols’ traditional fan (autograph) day before the Orange & White Game and bump it back to August, but he had the blessing and the backing of his boss.

That boss — Phillip Fulmer — happens to be a man whose storied coaching career at Tennessee got into the College Football Hall of Fame.

Pruitt told Fulmer exactly what he told reporters — that he wanted his team to treat the Orange & White Game as a full-speed dress rehearsal for an actual game day, and college football teams don’t hold autograph sessions with fans before actual games. They spend the night before the game and the morning of the game sequestered in a hotel, going through meetings and walk-throughs and film sessions and getting their minds and bodies prepared.

Considering the obvious fact that Tennessee will play a quality opponent — West Virginia — in Pruitt’s first game, anything that could decrease the hiccups leading into the game was something Fulmer understood.

“I liked his approach on not having the big (fan) day, because he’s trying to practice a game day,” Fulmer said. “That, to him, is important. It’s a game day for the kids to practice the West Virginia game, and East Tennessee State and all the way through, so he’s looking at it from that standpoint.”

Maybe this will turn out to be a grand experiment in how much you can ignore a fan base and still get away with it if you win. Then again…

This one’s a little different from usual, but if you ever wondered what Miles Davis and John Lee Hooker might sound like if they ever played together, there’s actually an answer for you.

… Although this album presents itself as the soundtrack to the film The Hot Spot, like many such releases it bares little relation to the music that was actually used in the film — not that much of this music was actually used. All one really needs to know about the film itself, other than the fact that it was directed by Dennis Hopper, is that it is awful, even by bad film standards. That it was the impetus for this marvelous music to be made is something listeners should be thankful for, particularly fans of either Miles Davis or John Lee Hooker. Anyone who grew up with the former artist during his electric transfusions of the ’60s and ’70s probably wondered why he wasn’t playing with John Lee Hooker the whole time, since they both seemed headed in the same direction. In fact, one wonders why it took this crummy film and the personal appeal of its director to bring these two musical giants together. That they didn’t seek to do something like this on their own can be looked at as a character flaw, one that can only be forgiven after listening to how wonderfully they interact here. An important aspect of the magic is their individual genius in the art of playing blues music in such utterly personal ways. There is no mistaking the sound of either Hooker or Davis for anyone else, with layer upon layer of detail backing that up — the actual sound of their instruments is distinctive, their choices of notes and timing completely unusual and impossible to imitate, and they both have a knack for casually making even the most basic sort of band track sound as if it is a style of music that has never been played before. No matter how many times one may have heard a bar band break into what they think is a Hooker boogie, a brief recovery period will still be required after first exposure to the tracks here. Often during his recording career, Hooker was able to get a particularly scintillating rhythm section sound going with whatever pros had been assembled for the occasion. This is one of these sessions, but it indeed makes it seem like a royal visit to have Davis blowing over the top of these grooves…

And here’s the soundtrack in its entirety. Prepare to be grooved.

It’s like somebody told them to get moody and atmospheric and they ran with it. Simply brilliant.